Certainty, Remorse and the Death Penalty

By the time you read this, Ram Jethmalani would most likely have walked away with a stay of the execution of three assassins of Rajiv Gandhi. You might not hear of it in the English and Hindi news channels - they're too busy monitoring Anna's health - but the Tamil media is crawling with news, analysis and opinions. Opinion is divided, obviously, for the issue is rather thorny. Is there a case for showing any mercy to three persons convicted of assassinating the Prime Minister and taking the lives of at least fourteen bystanders, even after the President has rejected their clemency petition?

I was reminded, yesterday, of a passage from Dosteovsky's The Idiot (It is a long passage, bear with me):

But here I should imagine the most terrible part of the whole punishment is, not the bodily pain at all—but the certain knowledge that in an hour,—then in ten minutes, then in half a minute, then now—this very instant soul must quit your body and that you will no longer be a man— and that this is certain, CERTAIN! That’s the point—the certainty of it. Just that instant when you place your head on the block and hear the iron grate over your head—then—that quarter of a second is the most awful of all.

‘This is not my own fantastical opinion—many people have thought the same; but I feel it so deeply that I’ll tell you what I think. I believe that to execute a man for murder is to punish him immeasurably more dreadfully than is equivalent to his crime. A murder by sentence is far more dreadful than a murder committed by a criminal. The man who is attacked by robbers at night, in a dark wood, or anywhere, undoubtedly hopes and hopes that he may yet escape until the very moment of his death. There are plenty of instances of a man running away, or imploring for mercy—at all events hoping on in some degree—even after his throat was cut. But in the case of an execution, that last hope—having which it is so immeasurably less dreadful to die,—is taken away from the wretch and CERTAINTY substituted in its place! There is his sentence, and with it that terrible certainty that he cannot possibly escape death—which, I consider, must be the most dreadful anguish in the world. You may place a soldier before a cannon’s mouth in battle, and fire upon him—and he will still hope. But read to that same soldier his death-sentence, and he will either go mad or burst into tears. Who dares to say that any man can suffer this without going mad? No, no! it is an abuse, a shame, it is unnecessary—why should such a thing exist? Doubtless there may be men who have been sentenced, who have suffered this mental anguish for a while and then have been reprieved; perhaps such men may have been able to relate their feelings afterwards. Our Lord Christ spoke of this anguish and dread. No! no! no! No man should be treated so, no man, no man!’

What these three prisoners have faced is far worse. The Supreme Court confirmed their death sentences in 2000 - eleven years ago. They filed a petition for clemency before the President immediately. With no discernible timeline for when the President would consider and pass an order on their application, they have been waking up for eleven years without knowing if they will be alive in the evening. Every book they read, they aren't sure if it will be their last. Every meal they eat, every piece of music they hear, every sunrise they witness, they wonder if they will once more. Surely, this is a far worse punishment than death itself.

These are people willing to die for a cause, yes. They have shown no remorse, yes. They are still considered heroes amongst their ilk. If twenty years of jail and twenty years of uncertainty of existence hasn't reformed them, what will?

But then, our criminal justice system doesn't deal with remorse. Our strongest justification for the death penalty is still retribution. Let me use the cruder term - revenge. Is it possible to feel remorse when an avenger hovers over you, holds you captive and takes painfully long to shut every exit door? We aren't giving our criminals the space to feel remorse.

What of the families of the victims in Sriperumbudur? A friend who did a report on them says they are all struggling to make ends meet, that they are still recovering from the loss. Our criminal justice system has nothing to make them a part of the process; a crime is seen as an offence against the state and not against an individual or a community. The state acts coldly, the state even eliminates the victim from the process, except as witnesses. How can Murugan feel sorry for his actions when he doesn't know what suffering he has caused? Our system doesn't make an offender face up to his wrongs, it only gives him a chance to defend himself against them. Telling a victim that you did nothing wrong is much harder than telling the State that you did nothing wrong.

The 187th Law Commission Report speaks of the death penalty in the most scathing terms, it tells us of everything that is wrong with it. It also deals with this issue - of prisoners on death row, for interminable periods. Our Supreme Court has dealt with cases like this in the past in favour of the offender, but these are quick-fix solutions. Cases where clemency petitions are pending with the President for decades are not unknown.

The first step we need to take is to recognise that revenge cannot and should not justify criminal punishments anymore. The death penalty is heinous, it is violent, it is morally unjustifiable, and it is random. It must go.

Father, Child and Holy Dinosaurs

In the last five days, I have watched two movies that portrayed a father-child relationship and featured dinosaurs. Apart from this superficial and slightly freakish similarity, I think I can confidently state that Deivathirumagal and The Tree of Life come from two different universes.

The former approaches the subject like a sugarcane juicer would approach sugarcane, extracting every little drop of sugary sweetness it can from the story of a childish father and an too-smart-for-her-age child. The latter, ah, well... The latter approaches the subject with a microscope, a syringe and fine piece of forceps; digging into the cane, showing you little nuances, droplets of saccharine, strands of rough fibre and unexpectedly zooming out, to explore the existence and relevance of the sugarcane itself. Deivathirumagal is about the unordinary, it is about special people in special circumstances, but it is told in the most ordinary of manners, milking the specialness of the situation for every cheap teardrop, being needlessly cute, needlessly melodramatic, needlessly obvious, needlessly over-the-top. The Tree of Life, on the other hand, is about normal people, everyday relationships, regular emotions, jealousies, happinesses and freedoms, but it is about finding the magic in that normality, and still asking questions of it, it is about valuing those emotions, validating them, almost, but still placing them amidst a tremendous canvas. The Tree of Life is a meditation, it is a probing, self-indulgent journey, it is an artist's quest to understand his own emotions, and their place in the cosmos around him.

In Deivathirumagal, as a result, there is constant chatter, the father and daughter have a family-whistle, they have cute duet acts, he tells her stories, and gets proud of her reciting nursery rhymes. In trying to show that special people are normal, the movie forgets that normal people don't have any of this. The love between a parent and a child manifests itself far more subtly, in the way parents look at their children, in the way they discipline them, in their inherent protectiveness, in their pride, their disappointments and their desires; in the warmth of their touch, in the way they hold their them, in quiet intimacy. The Tree of Life captures that - and this is its greatest achievement.

Ultimately, The Tree of Life is Syama Sastry asking Goddess Meenakshi difficult questions in Ahiri; Deivathirumagal is the Backstreet Boys telling you which way they want it.

Twenty-buck Meal

Apparently, there is a regulation in Tamil Nadu, which makes it mandatory for restaurant owners (from what I gather, the regulation applies to the Bhavans - Saravana Bhavan, Vasanta Bhavan, Balaji Bhavan and so on) to supply some "meals" for Rs. 20. (Just as an aside, the word "meals" is always plural. "Oru meals kudunga." "Have you taken your meals?" "Meals saapudlaama?" Even the menus in the restaurant offer only "Chennai Meals", "Banjabi Meals", "Chineese Meals". This is like caste names. "Saar, neenga Brahmins aa?" I'm tempted to say, "Ille saar. Naa oru Brahmin daan.") Today, instead of ordering "Limited Meals" (misleading name, the meals have enough food to cure famine in a small village), I order the twenty-buck meals. It felt a little cheap, initially, but when the food came, I was very satisfied.

The "Limited Meals" features a mound of rice that's as big as (and looks like) one hemisphere of a football on a plate. The plate also has various (replenishable) bowls of poriyal, kootu, karakozhambu, sambar, rasam, two sweets, buttermilk, curd and more-molaga. Oh, I forgot the appalam. When I finish eating this, I usually come back to office and collapse for a while. It is a highly satisfying meal, I agree, but sometimes it feels too satisfying. Priced at Rs. 55, it is an overwhelming avalanche of food. It makes you feel like one of those vaadyars who has to attend, conduct and eat food at weddings everyday.

The twenty-buck meal is perfect. The rice is about half the amount. There's only a sambar, rasam, kootu and buttermilk (and I suspect these bowls aren't bottomless). A mini-coffee at the end of it, and the world seemed like a good place to be. I know I'll feel hungry in some time (the Limited Meals makes me run away from food for the rest of the day), but there are yummy momos close by.

This is what I love the Tamil Nadu Government for. Things like the 10-buck movie tickets - if you didn't know, you can walk into any movie theatre in Tamil Nadu and ask for a 10-buck ticket. Yes, any theatre, even the Sathyams, the Inoxes and the PVRs of the world. Free mixies, grinders, laptops, TVs, 4 gms of gold (for marriageable women - I'm neither a woman, nor marriageable, but still), free cattle (I'm not kidding you)... What a great place to live!

In the end analysis, this twenty-buck meal is good for my waistline. People describe me today as "well-built", and I can sense that they're politely implying that I'm plump. I don't want them to graduate to saying "plump" when they mean "fat", or "fat" when they mean "gargantuan".

Sammy and Friends

This is now on cricinfo.
***

There is a theory doing the rounds that with Sammy in the eleven, the Windies will always be either one batsman short, or one bowler short. It is an easy argument to make. Sammy, the batsman, struggles to make an impact because he does not have the defensive technique to play a long innings. Sammy, the bowler, is a holder, and he cannot be more than that at his pace. The only successful attacking Test Match bowler at Sammy's pace in recent memory is Shaun Pollock, and Sammy doesn't have the skill or the control to be Shaun Pollock.

On the afternoon of the first day of the Third Test match, I prayed that West Indies would have the courage to play one batsman less, and pick Kemar Roach to bowl with Edwards, Rampaul, Sammy and Bishoo. In this series, every time the West Indies had the Indian batting on the mat, the batsmen found a passage of uninspiring bowling to capitalise on - Harbhajan and Raina did it in the First Test, Laxman and Raina in the Second. A fifth bowler might have helped, I thought; a fresh pair of legs, some variety. Moreover, the extra batsman hasn't done much at all. Yesterday, with Rampaul missing - an unfortunate, unforeseeable tragedy - the Windies still had India in trouble, at 18 for 2 and at 172 for 5, and both times, the bowlers who were doing the damage were too tired to continue. A fifth bowler might really have helped.

But with Sammy in the fold, a fifth bowler means a batsman less. It means that Baugh bats at six, and Sammy at seven - not confidence-inspiring at all. Which brings us to that easy argument again - that Sammy is the fielder, not good enough as a bowler or batsman.

Let's look at the tougher argument for a moment.

That the West Indies have been struggling to compete in Test matches is trite, it is obvious for all to see. They won a Test match after two years against Pakistan earlier this year. They ignominiously lost to Bangladesh at home some time ago when their top players walked out on the series. The Board and the Players Association are locked in a battle that resembles a socialist trade union struggle for better pay and better working conditions. There are player strikes, suspensions, mysterious selection decisions, rabid interviews, talks of corruption, mishandling, unnecessary interference. For ten years now, since Walsh retired, the West Indies have been a collection of talent fissured and fractured by politics.

Sammy's appointment as captain - he's known as a Board man, rather than the Player Association man his predecessor Gayle was - happened in this context. He was never a regular in the Test side, and in the shorter versions, his report card read, "Can do better". His appointment came as a bolt in the blue. And it was well understood that he is role as a captain is similar to his role as a bowler - hold until the next guy is fit and ready.

Sammy has done a lot more.

Before Sammy, there were flashes of team-play, in that unexpected Champions Trophy win, for instance. Fans of the team, like myself, have consoled ourselves in individual brilliance - Lara's exploits against Murali, Chanderpaul's invincible runs of attrition, Chris Gayle's random, merciless attacks, and Jerome Taylor's freak spell.

For the first time in ten years, under Sammy, the West Indies are playing like a team, pooling in collective resources to punch above their weight - in a manner that reminds one of the way New Zealand play their cricket. In this home season, they drew with Pakistan, and have troubled India more than India would've imagined possible. Yesterday, with Rampaul out of the eleven, it would have been easy for the West Indies to bend over and submit. But two bowlers and Sammy - who, by the way, always bowls better than he looks like he's bowling - all carrying niggles, made India fight for their runs. Except in that last hour, when the bowlers were too tired to make an impact, they traded on equal terms with the Indian batting line up.

Sammy has brought this will to toil to the team, he has brought heart and commitment. When he's badgered in the press conferences, his responses are never tired, they are honest. When he is asked about his own merit, he responds with belief. When asked about selection, Gayle's for instance, he responds with a shrug, it's not his job to comment. And that is exactly how he plays his cricket, and how he captains the side - with enthusiasm and devotion that belies his natural talents. Maintaining his morale, his conviction amidst this pressure from the media and the players is admirable enough; that he infects his teammates with this courage is the sign of a truly great leader.

This generation of West Indian cricketers are still only discovering how to win, and Sammy is pushing them to discover it together, as a team.

Sammy is still doing a holding job, he knows that. When Bravo, Bishoo or Barath are ready, he will, most probably, make way. But he is doing a lot more than he was expected to do - it is just a question of time, and a little luck, before results follow.

On a train from Edinburgh to Stirling, Scotland's endless, easy-on-the-eye landscapes reminded me of a Robert Louis Stevenson poem we read in school. Then, I realised that Stevenson, being Scottish, might have been describing this very scenery in his poem:

From a Railway Carriage.
Faster than fairies, faster than witches,
Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;
And charging along like troops in a battle
All through the meadows the horses and cattle:

All of the sights of the hill and the plain
Fly as thick as driving rain;
And ever again, in the wink of an eye,
Painted stations whistle by.

Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,
All by himself and gathering brambles;
Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;
And here is the green for stringing the daisies!

Here is a cart runaway in the road
Lumping along with man and load;
And here is a mill, and there is a river:
Each a glimpse and gone forever!

***

Her Obviousness - Part IV

Chandni Kedar floats around the terrace, the melody forms a part of the atmosphere, its phrases, the pulse of the teentaal bandish I picked up from that recording rings in the air.

My music isn't deep, ever. Even when I ponder, like I often do, I only ponder the notes, only ponder the glides, the connections, the phrases of the raag. I read of music and its higher purposes in many books; for me, music is what it is, my purpose is the raag, my contemplation is the ornateness of the notes that make it up. I wonder if my music lacks pathos as a result. I have a feel for music, I know; my haphazard training has meant that it has developed primarily through feel and not through mechanised training. I wonder if I should, for instance, contemplate the moonlight as I play Chandni Kedar, make the listener feel its softness through the music. But then, if I just meditate on the raag, shouldn't its natural construction emit the feel it is supposed to?

It's not like I haven't tried. I meditated on a radiant light while I played Deepak, but the raag suffered. I tried playing like the rain when I played Megh Malhar, but I realised that I could play many raags like the pitter-patter of the rain or the pounding of a thunderstorm. I wonder if these purposes are too obvious. What is the purpose, say, of Bhairavi? Or Gaud Saarang?

Sundari keeps beat with the drut teentaal in the Carnatic style. In some ways, I like it, it gives me a framework to play within. But it distracts me. I finish the drut with two long rounds of improvisation, and end with a complicated set-piece of threes. Even Gopal, hard as he is to impress with music, seems suitably soothed.

I am out of practice, though, I can feel it. Some phrases don't come out the way I want them to, some don't have the right feel, others don't pack the right punch. The stresses are a little off and the clarity of expression doesn't match the clarity of my thought. In improvisational music, what you imagine and what you execute must be a part of the same transaction; you must not be able to tell one from another, each must flow from the other, each must push the other. If your physical faculties struggle to keep up with your imagination, cyclically, your imagination suffers. Today, after this downward-spiraling internal tussle between idea and expression, I know that I not only have a long way to go, I also have to re-traverse the path I have un-traversed in the last month.

If you ask me why I haven't played the sarod for a month, I won't be able to give you a satisfactory answer. I haven't been all that busy, I admit - I am at home on most days by seven, on some days, even earlier. But I've spent my evenings vegetating on obscure sites on the internet, solving crossword puzzles, reading conflicting opinions on socio-economic-political issues (often ones that have no relevance to my existence - like the healthcare systems in the United States), going through blogs and profiles of women I will never meet, watching videos of cute babies, virtuoso musicians, mimicry artistes, ridiculous Sandalwood song-and-dance routines. I have spent them getting lost amongst cheap plots in cheap novels of espionage, intrigue, thrill, women of otherworldly allure, popular science, popularly wrong or popularly misleading science, ingenious methods of mass destruction, imagined motives, imagined communities, imagined realities.

Somewhere, it begins with a laziness to pick up the instrument and sit down with it. This laziness slowly transforms itself into guilt, and every evening, when I come back, a voice inside my head tells me to play, and I plead with the voice for some time to let my mind calm down after work. Before I know it, time evaporates from under my nose, I droop off, and wake up the next morning. My mind turns numb to the pricking of this guilt in a few days, and soon, the musiclessness becomes a part of my routine.

The sarod, unlike some other instruments, requires a proper sit-down session - it needs space, physically and mentally, it needs time, it needs a single-minded devotion. I told myself, over the last month, that my job did not give me this space, and that my music would, naturally, erode and die. How easy it is to lie to yourself.

All that was until I encountered Viayat Khan's Chandni Kedar recording, Live at the Taj, the cover says, accompanied by his brother, Imrat Khan on the surbahar, an instrument with a hauntingly deep, low, bass timbre. Here was a Kedar with a quirk, the komal nishad that made fleeting appearances to liven up proceedings. And every time I played it, Sundari opened her twinkling eyes, and gave me a look of pleasant surprise.

"Too beautiful!" Sundari says, when I finish my rendition.
"Thanks."

There is a long silence, only punctuated by Gopal's incessant fiddling with his phone. Avantika sips her glass of water poignantly, and I suspect it might not just be water.
"Who is your teacher?" she asks.

Avantika laughs, "Tell her," and turns to Sundari, "This is his favourite story."

I am flushed, it is my favourite story. It is the only thing I'm proud of.

"No one taught me," I say. "One of my uncles," the one who made that prophecy, "Is a collector of musical instruments. During a trip to Benaras, he discovered this sarod made in a style that was abandoned a hundred years ago for the newer model. He wanted to buy it, but the guy who owned the shop refused to sell it. He offered to make one in the same model, though. My uncle brought that replica back, proudly, and showed it off to everyone. I just picked it up, and started fiddling around... I was around eleven then, you know. In six months, I began playing some small tunes - film songs and stuff, you know, Didi tera dewar...
"No one taught the sarod in Mangalore - that's where I grew up - so, I learnt from another uncle, who is a vocalist, mimicking whatever he did on the voice on the instrument."

"His technique is almost blasphemous sometimes," Avantika juts in, "It shocks sarod players' consciences. I've seen that look on some of their faces, it's too funny!"

"That is super-cool!" Sundari says, "As in, you learnt all the instrument techniques from scratch? All by yourself?"
"Yeah, pretty much."
"Impressive, man."
Gopal says, suddenly jumping into the conversation from the corner of the terrace, "This Uji only looks like an unimpressive bumpkin. He's actually a dude. In other words, he's the opposite of what I am!"
This is Gopal fishing for a compliment. I don't react, but Sundari falls for the bait, "What are you saying? You're really a stud, man! You're doing a cool fellowship, you write so well, you're on TV all the time..."
"I live in a little shit-hole in T.Nagar with an aged uncle. I have no job, I have nothing I want to do." He is taking this too far now, but Sundari laughs this bait off.

"Are you guys drinking vodka?" I ask.
Avantika laughs, "Yeah. Want some?"
I walk into the apartment, and holler from inside, "Yo! What are you guys drinking this with?" I know that my fridge has no soft-drinks or juices.
"Cold water!" Gopal says. That is disgusting, vodka with cold water. I fish out some whiskey from my cupboard and fix myself a drink with ice.

Just then, I get an SMS, from Uma, "Awake?"

I call her back immediately, "Hello!"
"What's up!" she exclaims in a way in which only she can, mixing the excitement with a slice of restraint.
"I'm just drinking whiskey! What's up with you?" I ask, sipping my whiskey. It is a single-malt, bootlegged from Pondicherry, and goes down my parched gullet eagerly.
"Coming for the wedding, no?" Uma asks, sounding slightly tense.
"Of course! Why are you even asking?"
"Generally..." She pauses. I sense that she wants to tell me something else, but doesn't know how to. I wait for a few seconds for her to say something, before changing the topic to my eccentric guests, and the mini-performance on the terrace.
"The girl must be cute!" she says.
"Gopal has his eyes on her," I say, dryly. Then I add, remembering suddenly, "You remember that party where I first met you?"
"Vaguely!" she says, sounding vague.
"Yeah. So, I met this girl there. I even spoke to her for some time. But she doesn't remember me at all!"
"You reminded her of your conversation?" she asks, matter-of-factly.
"No! But we spoke for quite a while. And I remember her so clearly."
"Uji, did you say, 'Hey! Remember, we met at that party?'" she says, imitating my voice alarmingly accurately.
"No, man!" It is a ridiculous question to ask, I'm sure.
"Well, then how do you know she doesn't remember you?"
"She spoke about that party, she spoke about seeing Gopal there. Hell, she remembers you!"
"Hmmm," Uma says.

There is another pause, again awkward, where I sense Uma wants to tell me why she called, but she isn't able to bring herself to. We speak of other things. We discuss each other's jobs for a while. She writes on films and drama for a living, and she tells me that she has this idea for a book of famous stills from Indian cinema, with some comments on each of them. Her choices veer between the cliched and the eccentric. She has the immortal beam of light from Kaagaz ke phool in mind, she also thinks of the last freeze-frame in Charulata. From Sholay, she tells me of a shot of Jaya on the balcony - I don't recollect it, but she assures me it is worth it. She wants to include a couple of shots from an Adoor Gopalakrishnan movie I haven't seen. "Gopal was named after him, you know?" she says. We discuss this and more for a bit, until I get through many more sips of my whiskey, before I get impatient, "Listen, Uma. You didn't call me for this chit-chat, did you? Because I have to go back to my guests at some point."

Uma laughs nervously, and says, "Ok. Listen. I am getting really nervous about this wedding."
"Next Sunday, right? Isn't it a little late to be getting nervous?"
"Better now than after, I think."
I laugh, and ask, "What are you nervous about?"
"Random things, you know. I've been seeing Arun for a year-and-a-half, yes? But living with him is a completely different deal, no?" Before I can react, she continues, "I mean, who knows what I'll discover about him, what habits will irritate me... I mean, it's all okay to love someone, and I love him, okay? But I'm getting a little tense about the permanence attached to this wedding."
"Why don't you live with him for a while before marrying him?"
"Yeah, right."
"I'm serious."
"Dude, we still live in India, as much as we try denying it."
It is time now for falsely confident advice. "Hey, it'll all be perfectly fine! I mean, he's a great guy, you love him... Yeah, you'll probably find some things about him that you don't like - and you'll never discover these things unless you live with him. But those are just small compromises, right?" I don't know Arun too well at all. I have this theory, that you can never know a person unless you drop societal niceties when you talk to them, and I've met him only twice, in very civil, very social circumstances. But this is cliched advice, I don't need to know Arun, or even Uma, to give this speech. Like the horoscope advice in the papers, "Control your temper to avoid confrontation", it is applicable to any person, of any persuasion, on any day of the week.

She reacts with silence. I drone on along the same lines, telling her of stability, long-term vision, and lasting relationships. I morph into a nondescript self-help book.

She says, suddenly, "Can I come and stay with you for a couple of days?" She pauses, and continues, "I just need to get away from this world for a bit."
I am taken aback, but I don't let it get in the way of my response, "Yeah, sure!"
"Thanks!" she says, sounding relieved. And she adds again, "Listen, no Gopal for those two or three days, please?"
I almost saw that request coming.

Some time ago, Uma came to Chennai for a weekend. She wanted to get away from her work, her extended family introducing her to various eligible boys, and her boss who was developing a dangerous crush on her. I didn't live in Chennai then, I would move there a couple of weeks later. She stayed with Gopal at his uncle's house. Conveniently, Gopal's uncle was out of town.

I have heard this story from both parties, and my version is a little muddled.

Uma told me on the phone, the evening I told her that I had met Gopal after years, "It was too much fun, you know. We walked all around Madras, going on aimless walks on the beach, around Georgetown, in the bylanes around the Central station. We came back home, drank lots, watched art movies, read poetry to each other... It was a lot of fun. It felt like we had finally gotten over the fact that we had broken up."

Gopal, on the other hand, said, "So, she came one afternoon. I picked her up from the station and showed her around the by-lanes. We saw all sorts of stuff, we bought strange books off pavements. Then I took her to Georgetown, bought her Burmese noodles. We went to the beach, we drank, we watched movies. It was highly romantic.
"We did some hanky-panky at night," he added, "And she promised to come back next weekend. But she didn't. And she didn't come on the weekend after either. Then, one day, out of the blue, she called me and said she was seeing this other guy. Some fucker called Arun. He's a lawyer, apparently. Sounds like a bloody bore, no?"

Uma had a different version of Arun, "You remember this guy I told you about? The cute, fair, tall, slightly plump guy..." I remembered her mentioning some such. "So, I'm seeing him now."

Gopal said, "He has a fascination for cars, apparently. So hackneyed, man. I'm sure he's a James Bond fan. She deserves better, dude, don't you think?"

"He's so refreshing," Uma told me, a month into the relationship, "Never tired, never irritated, never complains of work, or the pressures of the world. He's a big-shot in his law firm, but it doesn't affect what he's like outside. Such a breath of fresh air, to be around him in the evenings!"

"They seem very settled, man," Gopal said, resignedly, "I'm not saying she should dump him for me, but she really should find someone better. Anyway, thank god she never found out that I was getting some relapse of feelings." Uma found out, soon enough. She ignored Gopal completely for a while - and that was the least she could do for his well-being, give him that little distance from her - and Gopal eventually stopped talking of Arun and his mainstream-ness.

It was in this context that I re-connected with Gopal - he saw me as a window to Uma, and he tried, in convoluted ways, to gaze through it. Sadly for him, she closed the curtains firmly. In this second-coming, I saw a Gopal who was a faint shadow of his earlier self. He got drunk and sobbed about his failed party, he withdrew into his uncle's house and buried himself in writing some fiction. He showed me a few chapters of the book, they were stultifying beyond belief. I don't know if you can describe it as fiction at all, much of the book seemed like a pompous autobiography masquerading as a novel about a young student leader getting disillusioned by a nasty system. The novel was unbecoming of someone of Gopal's intelligence - it was biased, the characters were dreadfully two-dimensional. I thought of Gopal's understanding of people as so perceptive and nuanced, that I couldn't digest this drivel. I wondered if his circumstances had forced him to paint his characters in such clearly black-or-white shades. The writing was boring, the character arcs were predictable, he segued too often into political sermons and morality tales. In short, it was the opposite of unputdownable - unpickupable.

I don't know how the novel ended, because he never finished it. He found the strength, somehow, to be objective about the book, and gave up.

What intrigued me the most during this time, was that Gopal managed to maintain his regular media appearances. He remained a much-wanted talking head on TV and wrote columns for newspapers and magazines. His opinions still leaned as leftwards as they had when he was in the party, but because be fashioned himself as an academic, and not a politician, they were seen as having more credibility.

Gopal and I became each other's only close friends in the last year or so, walking around the bazaar, drinking tea and whiskey, riding around the city on his bike, and making whimsical trips to places around Chennai. Gopal has vast interlocking networks of politicians, academics, writers and dramatists, who hang out in my balcony often. He uses my apartment as his lounge, and I don't complain; I don't have too many visitors otherwise.

I don't know how I will handle Uma's request. It will be impossible to tell Gopal that Uma will come, but she doesn't want to meet him. If I tell him that I'm going out of town, and he finds out I'm here, he'll get very upset. He has a house key, he might even try taking advantage of an empty apartment.

But then, Uma will come only on that condition. "Yeah, sure. No Gopal for those days," I concede.
Uma says, "Great! See you next weekend?"
It is Thursday today, "You mean day after tomorrow?"
She checks something and says, "Oh yeah! Yes, day after tomorrow."
"Done."

I walk back to the terrace to find my three guests locked in what looks like a fierce debate, but on closer inspection, turns out to be merely a dissection of Gopal's rebel-plan for Sundari. "Mussolini had a greater respect for human liberties than your parents!" Gopal says. She seems a little uncomfortable with the statement, but says nothing.

Gopal then plans a weekend getaway, to Bangalore, and lays it down like it is a military operation, "Tell your parents that you're going with a couple of friends, and come. Even if they refuse, just leave. Drastic action is the order of the day."
"Which weekend are you planning this?" I ask, hopefully.
"Tomorrow night," he says.
"You're also going?" I ask, with more hope in my voice.
"I am." I am relieved now. Uma can come without fearing of bumping into Gopal.

"Come along?" Sundari asks me, with those pleading eyebrows of hers - in two words, turning my solution into a whole new conundrum.
***

Have had a very tough two weeks. Too many night show movies, concerts, partying, a trip to Bangalore and work. And, I'm off westward today - for the first time in my life, beyond Jaisalmer. Back in two weeks to tell you more of this story.

Her Obviousness - Part III

Continued from here. All parts together, are here.
***

"How is Uma?" Gopal asks. He asks me this question every time we talk of her. In the time when I was Gopal's understudy-cum-manfriday, I developed an unclassifiable love for Uma. She was a whole five years older than me, she had a job, and lived in a world that I barely comprehended at the time. It strikes me that she was, then, as old as I am now. Through the eyes of a eighteen-year-old, twenty-four did seem like an eternity away - it is that natural feeling, isn't it, where ages seem older until you actually live them.

Uma accompanied Gopal to most of his rallies and meetings, and because he spent most of his time hobnobbing with the bigwigs, we spent most of our time talking to each other. There was always an aura of melancholy about Uma; but it was an assured melancholy, as if she was very happy being like that. She was social, sometimes, too social for her own good, had multifarious friends in multifarious surroundings, but she never fit right into anything - there was a removedness about her involvement. Even when she spoke to me, in conversations that were often preciously private, she never looked at me - seemed to be addressing a third person who invisibly sat in front of her eyes.

We didn't use Gopal as a crutch to hang out together for much longer, we met independently of him. Afternoons, when I rarely had class, were spent together inhaling book-dust in Bangalore's cubbyhole bookshops, and drinking diluted beer in its gloomy pubs listening to lazy music. If you ask me what we spoke about on those afternoons, I will struggle to tell you. We spoke about books, I think, we loved very similar authors - the Americans, Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Steinbeck, and the Indians - Ghosh, Seth and Narayan. Often, we walked down MG Road, when it still had its boulevard, slightly buzzed, slightly melancholic, completely silent and absolutely content being in each other's company.

She was from a family that heard a lot of Carnatic music, though she didn't know much, and I remember conversations about Hindustani and Carnatic music. We both loved O.P. Nayyar, and despised A.R.Rahman, and went on long drives in her car, listening to and singing along with old Hindi music cassettes.
"How do you know all these songs?" she asked me, once.
"My father," I said, "Was a fanatic." My family didn't like my father's obsession, because they came from a family of Hindustani vocalists, all descendants of my great-grandfather, who was a close friend of the legendary Ustad Abdul Karim Khan, in addition to being a respected doctor. My grand-uncle had an indelible impact on Yakshagana music, being one of the pioneers who gave it a Hindustani music twist. Uma's grandfather was a leading concert-organiser of his time, and her family, who viewed me as an adorable kid who was, perhaps, in love with her, organised two concerts for me that year.

The end of Gopal's relationship with her came quite inevitably - he was too busy to spend enough time with her, and she was too irritated with his unpredictable schedule and his increasing involvement with the Party. "The Party is his only girlfriend," she said, unwittingly echoing what Bhagat Singh once said about independence being his bride. "If I have a boyfriend, I should be able to talk to him at least once in two days, no?" she asked, tiredly.

I was in a strange position, being a close confidante of both parties. "She's too clingy, man," Gopal said, "I mean, if I go to a village with no network for a couple of days, I'm dead." I wanted to tell him that landline phones were everywhere, and that he could call her once in a while, wherever he was, but, unlike now, our relationship wasn't one of equals then.

This break-up upset me a little more than I thought it would. Gopal and Uma seemed so naturally to fit into each other's lives. Uma's modelling gave her an aura of being stupid, but she wasn't. Sometimes, her intelligence and depth of emotion dwarfed Gopal's. Gopal came across as someone who was all about impact, but even he had an inherent intellectualism about him. He was someone who found justifications for his living, however indefensible his ways were, and went to great lengths, reading, thinking and writing about these theories. She saw through him, and I knew he liked that.

They understood each other in quiet ways that I haven't seen much in couples. They spoke very little, and communicated without any fuss. They never had a misunderstanding that I knew of - and being a close friend of both of them, I knew a lot. The end came because they just drifted apart, they felt very little need for each other. They got each other so well that they never had a break-up conversation. One evening, they had a normal conversation in my presence at his apartment, and by the end of it, they knew it was time to break-up.

I begged Gopal many times to talk to her, and get back together with her. He said, "Your being upset with this is most bizarre. Both Uma and I think you're in love with her, and now when your coast is clear, you're getting upset about it. We are fine, we've moved on. I think you should too."

Uma said, "Uji, I sometimes think you were in love with Gopal and me as a concept, and not the two of us individually."
I disagreed, "No. I'm only in love with you, I'll admit that. But I have no chances whatsoever, I'll admit that also. But it will pass, I think. It is a question of finding someone else."
She laughed, "Then stop getting upset about this."
"But you guys were so perfect..."
"I was in that relationship, Uji," she said, with an air of finality, "Not you."

They kept in touch, I think, for some time, although I lost all contact with Gopal. Every now and then, I'd see her reply to an SMS with the her Gopal-expression, and walk away to a corner when she got a call, like she did when Gopal called. When he came back to Bangalore, for weekends, they would make plans to meet, and occasionally, these plans fructified. But their relationship faded away completely within six months, leaving behind hazy memories that are half-true, half-fantasy, and the satisfaction, Uma told me, of knowing someone as lovely as Gopal.

By the end of my second year in college, my life was so meshed with Uma's, that people presumed she was my girlfriend. In college, that made me a cool guy, I was Gopal's successor in every way. Amongst her friends, though, it made her highly uncomfortable. From the cosy comfort of a close friendship, I watched her draw harsh lines that just made us good friends, then friends, and eventually old-friends-who-say-hi-occasionally. "Oh, each time we meet, we pick up right where we left off, like we've always been that way," we say, to other people. Only we know how untrue that is.

Gopal never fails to ask me, "How is Uma?" every time we talk of her, like he has done just now. Initially, I doubted the genuineness of his question, but of late, I'm convinced that he is actually concerned. She never asks me about him, unless I bring him up in conversation.
"I spoke to her yesterday," I say, "She's getting a little tense about all the wedding planning."
"The wedding planning? Or getting married?"
"A bit of both, I think."

"Who next?" Sundari asks, excited by this conversation.
Gopal goes into a ponderous silence for a few seconds and declares, "There was this other girl, Mandavi..." Gopal stops, and I know why he does. He has confessed to me that this relationship lasted only for a few weeks, and that he is embarrassed about remembering precious little about it. "I don't even remember where we first kissed!" he told me once. He said, "I'm telling you what happened and how, so that the two of us can reconstruct it later."

I wonder if one can forget an entire relationship, however unserious it was.

"But that didn't last long," Gopal said, "Ended as abruptly as it started."

There is an awkward silence - everyone expects Gopal to say something more about Mandavi, but he doesn't, he has nothing to say.
Avantika breaks the silence with, "Anyone wants chai?" She will offer to make some now, but I don't want her chai, it lacks punch, it is too subtle for me.
"Let's walk down to the tea shop at the end of the road?" I ask, and everyone seems more enthusiastic.

Gopal empties the bowl of fruits on to his hand, distributes them amongst us, fairly and equally, in his communist manner, and leads us out of the doorway, down the stairs and through the front gate.

I live in T. Nagar, where South India buys bling sarees and davanis for bling weddings, in what used to be a quiet lane behind the immortal Pondy Bazaar. My mother told me, when I was a kid, that it was called Pondy Bazaar because most of the goods came from Pondicherry. Recently, a book put that theory to rest for me - the name came as a corruption of Soundara Pandy Bazaar, named after a certain Soundarapandian Nadar, whose statue proudly stood at one end of the bazaar.

On weekends, only the brave denizens of the neighbourhood venture out on foot, and only the foolish take their cars outside the safety of their apartment's minuscule parking lots. Pondy Bazaar is frighteningly crowded, and frighteningly popular. You cannot walk three feet without bumping into a bargain or overhearing one. You can buy anything for a little less than half the price he quotes for it, you can find spare parts for anything you own, you can find someone to repair every kind of machinery. In a year and a bit, Pondy Bazaar hasn't disappointed me even once.

But once the shutters fall down on the mega-shops, the gaudy, flashing neon lights rest for the day, their employees work their way into jam-packed buses to their suburbs, the roadside hawkers throw tarpaulin over their little shops, the area acquires a different glow. The roads are bathed in orange, from the hazy lights that dot the roadside, the pavements are taken over by small omelette and tea sellers, a few drunks walk to and from the local wine shop, families and shoppers gather at the eateries for dinner, the occasional bike speeds by, a few cars sail along the street. Strange city maintenance vehicles trundle along - the garbage trucks that make half-hearted attempts at cleaning the streets, another one that emits some spray that apparently de-mosquitoes the area, tow trucks that had a busy day making small money off parking violators, assorted cranes from frenetic construction sites make their way back to their nightly resting places.

We trudge down my street and take the right turn on to the Bazaar. Gopal and Sundari walk a little behind Avantika and me. They are engrossed in a conversation about some play she acted in last week. Gopal is giving her some kind of feedback, I gather.

Avantika says, "Pretty girl, no?" I nod. "I think there's something going on," she adds.
"You're meeting both of them for the first time, and you still want to gossip."
"I'm just speculating, pah!"

We congregate around the tea shop, an open air set-up made entirely of tyres, plastic drums and plywood. A young boy sits behind this plywood counter and takes orders, and doles out cigarettes and crunchies along with the tea. We get four teas for the four of us, and I help myself to a cigarette. Gopal gives me a look, and I say, "Dude, I told you, once a week. The habit's on its way out."

I take a strip of glossy paper kept on a plastic plate, ignite it in a small lamp kept for the purpose, and light my cigarette with it. I ask Sundari, "So, why are you being hidden from your parents?" Her non-recognition has made it very difficult for me to talk to her, and this question has taken some courage.

She giggles and says, "Long story, man."
Gopal butts in, "So, some guy was supposed to come and see her today, even though she made it very clear to her parents that she was not interested in this sort of thing."
"So," she continues, "We made a plan. I left home in the morning, and haven't gone back since... My parents know most of my friends, and they would have started looking by lunch time. But they don't know Gopal, so I'm hiding with him. I send them messages from STD booths telling them I'm alive, and that I'm only protesting."
Avantika laughs. I say, "This plan smacks of Gopal."
Sundari beams at him, "Yes. Gopal is planning a rebellion for me."
"That's a bit extreme, no?" I ask him, "Even with your background?"
"You don't know her parents, Uji," he says, "She can't leave the house after seven, unless she is at a concert or a performance."
"Or at a friend's house they approve of." she adds.
"Yeah. It's too oppressive... She's not a kid, right?"
"You know, they didn't even ask me before beginning this matrimony process. Suddenly, I find a guy's matrimony profile in my inbox, and when I ask my Appa, he coolly tells me that he has sent out my profile along with my email address to many eligible boys. I am checking my desktop for something, and there's a folder with my photos - in different poses, different clothes, singing, acting, dancing, at home, with my parents, with my brother, with cousins, grandparents. And, to top it all, a zip-file with all these photos in it! God knows which creep or his father has been checking me out.
"Two weeks ago, they met this aunty and uncle, who saw me act in a play and fell in love with me. So, their son, some boring engineering dude, with some boring engineering job, in some boring software company was supposed to turn up this evening to check me out."
"You decided you'd rather have Gopal check you out," I say.
She giggles again, "Yeah, why not! He's good-looking, and, from what I gather, rather smart also."

Gopal says, "You're the only one who thinks I'm good-looking."
He is lying. Uma always told me she thought Gopal was handsome. Hell, even I think he is handsome.
Gopal is interested in this girl, and he is making it uncharacteristically obvious to everyone.

"Okay, you're not a John Abraham with mass appeal," Sundari laughs, "But you have an appeal about you."
"Yeah. His mass appeals to some people," I say, punching Gopal on his tummy.
"I'm working on it, dude. Strict diets, walks around the neighbourhood... It's all happening."

"Tell me," Sundari says suddenly, "Don't you think this John Abraham looks like his face has been photoshopped on to the rest of his body? Or, like one of those photos you take with that cutout on which you add your face..."
We laugh, and she says, "I was watching him for an hour on Koffee with Karan this morning, and that is the only thought that came to my mind. I didn't even hear what he was saying." We laugh some more.

Avantika is the first to finish her tea, and she asks for another one. We finish slowly, and are happy with one. I stub out my half-finished cigarette. The fact that I don't enjoy it anymore is encouraging.
Trudging back to my house, Sundari walks with me. She asks, "Will you play for us when we go back?"
"I haven't played in a month, I've almost stopped, you know," I tell her. She looks a bit disappointed, so I add, "But I'll play." I make a theatrical look towards the skies, and declare, "I'll play this raag called Chandni Kedar?"
"Like the moonlight?" she asks.
"Yes," I say. I am such a fraud; the moonlight has little to do with my choice of raag, I have just spent the last week listening to a Vilayat Khan recording of it. I like listening to classical music recordings over weeks, they take time to seep in, they take time to get under your skin, possess you and push you to want to recreate the magic. The Chandni Kedar, a raag I never learnt formally, is nearly ripe now.
"I don't know much about Hindustani music," she says, "Although I can identify some raags. Is Chandni Kedar like Kedar? I think I can identify that..."
"Oh yeah, it is. The differences are very small," I say.

We are home, and I bring my sarod out to the terrace, along with my tanpura box. Once the drone begins, I start the arduous task of tuning an unused sarod. The instrument, like most, hates being neglected, and has to be coaxed back into civil behaviour. It takes a half an hour to get the twenty-three strings in shape, and fingers warmed up and ready to play. Avantika and Gopal don't have the patience, and have retreated back into the house, while Sundari watches me tune silently with no comment.

I look up at her, and say, "Ok, I'm ready." She nods, smiling, and shouts, "Gopal! He's ready." Gopal makes some noise from inside the house. She says, "Start, they'll come."

I start, plucking the sa string, and adding a layer of the raag on it with the sympathetic strings. I repeat, until I am sure of the sa. I begin adding notes to the sa now, the ri, the pa. Small phrases, a twang of the support strings, another small phrase, another twang. Then I let out a couple of phrases, very typical of the Kedars. She smiles, I play the phrases again, just to see that smile again. She imitates the curve of the phrase with her hand.

Gopal and Avantika join us in the terrace, with glasses of water in their hands. Sundari whispers to Gopal, "Raag Chandni Kedar." Gopal nods, cluelessly. Avantika says, "Hmmm," to a phrase I play.

The alaap continues, meandering in the lower registers, setting a platform for the raag. I am more unhurried than I usually am, a sign that the raag has made some inroads into my system. Sundari likes the two ma-s in succession, the phrase pa-ma-ma brings that smile to her face each time. I use it more often that I normally would.

She gets a message on her phone, she looks at it, smiles, turns to Gopal and smiles again. I noticed Gopal fiddling with his phone just a few seconds ago. This happens again, and again. I close my eyes, and concentrate on the raag, nothing else can soothe me now.
***

To continue.